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Friday, April 15, 2011

A Little More Final Cut Pro X

We're still digesting Tuesday's "sneak peak," and while most everyone is careful to say "we have to wait and see the real thing" the pro- and anti- camps are already staking out their high-grounds, and will be ready to do battle once the software is released.

Here's the latest I've found:

Firstly, you can find full-screen screen-shots in the article at NoFilmSchool, including this one:

Also at NoFilmSchool, Ryan Koo takes on those that say that Apple hasn't really announced anything new - most of the features shown already exist in other programs - and says that it’s not what features you include in a piece of software, it’s how you design them:

To me, a great example is the new Color Board. Apple scraps the three-way color correction wheels that we’re used to in favor of this [...]
Just looking at the non-interactive screenshot, you can hazard a guess on how to use it: grab the white circle to adjust highlights, grab the gray circle to adjust midtones, and grab the black circle to adjust shadows. Move the icons on the X axis to adjust the hue and on the Y axis to adjust the brightness.

The Hollywood Reporter has some quotes from Avid's CEO, Gary Greenfield:

I think what was reiterated last night is what we have been telling our customers for a long time, that Avid is the company that wakes in the morning focused on professional workflows -- professional workflows for professionals who making a living doing what they are doing

Kurt Lancaster at Mastering Film walks through all the feature shown, though at the beginning he reports he was never a fan of the original program:

The interface for Final Cut was never really intuitive, and relatively hard to teach. It never had the design panache of the image-defining Apple brand. To me, it was a disappointment, and I had always felt that Sony Vegas was superior in the realm of an intuitive interface and ease of use.

But not anymore. I’m more excited about this release of Final Cut than any other software I’ve seen.

Jon Chappell at Digital Rebellion is generally hopeful, though he notes at least one concern:

The feature I'm most unsure about is dynamic tracks. Tracks will appear and disappear as you move clips around and new tracks will be added when you use the magnetic timeline. This could cause organizational problems if you always put music on tracks 8-9 for instance, and it would be a nightmare if you need to output a multi-channel show.

And Chris Portal comes out swinging in defense of the complaints about it's iMovie-like appearance, it's interface, and it's cheapness [Really? People are upset about that?! -Ed]

Aspects of Final Cut Pro X do indeed look and feel like iMovie, but so what. What does that mean? As some have already countered, “just because a Ford and a Ferrari (and a Juke) have a steering wheel and an accelerator, it doesn’t make them the same car”.

Steve Miller at The DV Show takes everything apart - including the icon! - and sees the worst:

1. Watching video of the SuperMeet and hearing over 1500 editors screaming and shouting in awe over software that looks and performs like a pumped up version of iMovie just didn’t seem right. It was like Steven Spielberg getting all excited over the release of a Flip camera – it just didn’t seem to go.